Sunday, 28 July 2013

MARUKAO丸颜先生 SOFA DREAM // HELLO FUNK

Here and now I am very happy to present to you some more well-chosen sounds from the young Chinese label, Groove Bunny Records - these are the same guys that bought us MADPETE's Cantonese Boom Bap, nicely minimal and retro hip hop with raps in Cantonese. How pleasant were those sounds.

Anyway yeah, some more sounds found by Groove Bunny come from Chinese producer Marukao - I am not sure what the characters mean though. If you translate them from the Chinese you get "Pills Mr. Yen" so I don't even know what to say, let's just stick with Marukao. In any case, the songs that have been found and reissued, I guess, are not "new" in the proper sense of the word. You know I'm always going on about when is a new song a new song and blah blah blah, well, both of these are like four years old. So there's old for you. But they're new. No one's probably ever heard them, not least anyone reading this anyway.

First up we have 'Sofa Dream' - it's a chilled number that was made in 2009 sounds as though it could have been made yesterday. It truly is a slow jam sofa dream. Somnolent strings drift in and out like your consciousness in a state of dozement laying on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon as tremolo synths provide that delicate wobble between dreaming and reality. Virtuoso warm solo synth sounds play over the top like dappled sunshine, giving it a good lounge vibe.

The beat is skiffling and plays to catch up with itself at times, adding delicious fills that provide the energy in this otherwise sleep-inducing atmosphere. It's laid-back with a glitchy edge.

On the other hand, we have the older (2008) stylings of 'Hello Funk'. As you might be able to gather from the title, it's pretty funky. Modulating bass synths provide a foundation that verges on cheeky in its sound, one that's certainly sidestepping towards the dancefloor rather than the sofa.

This particular vibe is helped along by cartoony lead synth noises, like an altered synth-vox, which it some fun alongside the bouncy beat. The latter is in itself quite 80s and it's when I noticed that distinct snare strike that the rest of the song began to sound of-that-time, too. It certainly is funky though. The organs towards the end really give it a drop of condensed funk, each whistling note making your mind melt a little bit - in a good way.

Now, if this is what was happening all those years ago - what will be happening now I wonder?